Stress and Burnout

Some of you come from the medical field. You may have decided to go into medicine for a number of reasons. These may include intense need to care for other human beings, feeling the call to save lives, a desire to excel in the sciences, pressures from family members to go into a lucrative field, or because as Type A, intelligent, driven individuals you wanted to get into the best profession that you could. Or maybe you wanted to care for belligerent, drunk people for part of your day. Whatever your motivation, you were determined to succeed!

Some of you may have chosen non-medical fields but find yourselves as the true healers of your community. You're the reliable ones. Your friends call you in times of trouble and desperation, because they know that they can count on you. People look to you for guidance. They look to you for strength. They need you to be their backbone for them, the grounding cord that they're lacking. Your personality obliges them, and you're happy to do it.

But can we continue to act in this way? Are we not human and vulnerable too? We've become accustomed to absorbing the impact of the negative energy and trying to move on. Yet we cannot soak in everyone else's energy and still maintain our own. It should come as no surprise, then that this ultimately leads to burnout.

Other than quitting or reducing our work hours, or becoming hermits, or moving to an ashram in India, do we have any other options? The answer is YES. How do we do that while still in our current situations? In order to be able to find sustainability we need to put ourselves first. We do that by increasing our reserves, like filling up our gas tanks. We do that by nurturing our own physical, social, emotional, and spiritual health. For more, click here: "stress and burnout."